Domini M. Torrevillas
The Philippine Star

An organization that has been working for wo-men’s rights and welfare is the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), which was formed at the turn of the century for the purpose of giving shelter to young women living in the city of Manila. The Y, managed by volunteer professionals, executives and housewives, now counts thousands of members in 26 chapters around the country. Its wholesome activities include inspirational meetings and lectures on global and national concerns and recreational activities for families.

The global and local affairs committee has been planning forthcoming activities – a Joint YMCA-YWCA World Week of Prayer and World Fellowship (November 14-20), 16 days of activism (November 25-December 10); World AIDS Day (December 1), and Human Rights Day (December 10).

Steeped in the preparations are former DSWD Secretary Corazon Alma de Leon and Lourdes Casas Quezon, chair and co-chair, respectively, of the global and local affairs committee; Dr. Josefina D. Pineda, national president; Ma. Virginia L. Sadora, national executive director; Neriza B. Llena, national program officer, and Phoebe Sara U. Cortez

To know what human rights are all about – prior to sponsoring Human Rights Day in December __ the global and local affairs committee – invited Human Rights Commissioner Puring Quisumbing to talk about the human rights situation in the country.

To her credit, instead of angrily ticking off the numbers of people killed whose rights had been violated, Dr. Quisumbing spoke on what constitutes human rights at a round-table discussion. What she said could form a primer that the committee can distribute on Human Rights Day.

First, she said human rights are rights natural to human persons; these are not given by law, so no law can take them away from any person.

Human rights are classified into civil rights, political rights,, economic rights (right to food and water, for instance), social rights (to education, among others), and cultural rights (such as those enjoyed by indigenous people.

All these rights are universal (for all persons), indivisible (one kind of right cannot hold in suspension another rights; one can’t enjoy one right without the other), and inter-related (one right will support the other).

There is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, she said, is not law, but is “so morally powerful that it is law.” To elaborate, the Declaration holds peoples of the world to agree on the common standards that are applied towards the preservation of the dignity of the human person.

In connection with the Universal Declaration, six conventions/covenants have been adopted and ratified by governments of member countries of the United Nations, including the Philippine government.

These are the covenants of civil and political rights, and economic/social/cultural rights; the conventions on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW), the rights of the child (CRCC), against torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, and on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (CERD). Not yet ratified is the convention of the rights of migrant workers and their families, and the convention on the rights of disabled persons.

The Philippine government has been active in promoting the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women. It has passed the Anti-Trafficking Law, and the Violence Against Women (VAW) law.

The enthusiastic listeners perked up even more when Dr. Quisumbing talked on battered women’s rights. It’s taken long for the Supreme Court to make a ruling on the battered wife’s use of self-defense as reason for her killing of her husband, but that’s because, the High Tribunal, she said, is “conservative.” It has a rule on maintaining stability, “so people will trust continuity.”

In making rulings on a wife’s killing her spouse, the court has been using the elements of immediate response (i.e. the wife kills the husband not premeditatively), and proportionality (if the wife has been constantly battered with a chair, the wife’s shooting him with a gun is not proportional to the crime committed).

To explain further, Dr. Quisumbing said the elements of immediacy and propor-tionately cannot be equated with the battered wife syndrome, which has the wife reacting to her being physically maltreated after a long delay. Thus the Supreme Court has ruled that delayed reaction does not justify the cutting off of Bobbit’s peter.

The Genosa Doctrine was brought up. This had to do with a woman’s killing of her husband with a gun while the husband was asleep. The defense was that she was a battered wife, her evidence being the reports of the doctor to whom she had gone after every mauling session. She was convicted by the lower court, but the case was elevated to the Supreme Court.

Lawyer Katrina Legarda was told the High tribunal would not hold a trial, but Legarda filed an omnibus motion, saying the justices should look at the law in other countries which defined the battered wife syndrome as a condition in which the wife’s defending herself is a psychological condition, in which case the element of immediacy and proportionality do not apply.

The Supreme Court, said Dr. Quisumbing, accepted Legarda’s brief, but, Justice Artemio Panganiban said that while the Court accepted the battered wife syndrome, the case had to be remanded to the trial court which would determine if Genosa did suffer from the battered wife syndrome. Unfortunately, in the Philippines, there are not too many psychology experts who could show that the battered wife syndrome does indeed exist in the Genosa case, said Dr. Quisumbing.

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E-mail: dominimt2000@yahoo.com